For one month every four years, the United States — try as it might — can’t impose its vacuous culture on the rest of the planet. The World Cup arrives and the Americans are, at best, an afterthought.

Humanity is, of course, better off for the break. A little samba in the stands is more interesting than Saw 12.

But if the world’s biggest sporting event, which kicks off in a fortnight (that’s soccer talk for “two weeks”), highlights the shortcomings of a nation in thrall of Jersey Shore, it is not entirely kind to the rest of the globe, either.

Look closely at the tourney, hosted by South Africa this time around, and you’ll see evidence of the ridiculous everywhere: an England clinging pathetically to its colonial past; a French penchant for the absurd; Africans struggling to shake off their affinity for hocus-pocus; and an Asian communist dictatorship trying to make sense of this whole capitalism thing.

So throw on your kit and strap up your boots (you have no idea what we’re talking about, do you?) as the Phoenix offers up a geopolitical guide to the 2010 World Cup, with a heavy dollop of the ludicrous and profane.

This is soccer as a window onto the soul. And even the Americans, afterthought they may be, are in our sights.

The vindication of Sarah Palin?
Here in the States, those waiting on the Rapture could find themselves a bit bewildered on the morning of June 11. Look around the office at 10 am Eastern Time and suddenly all the hedonist liberals, feckless illegals, and other assorted sinners will be gone.

Has God whisked them away to meet Jesus at his return? the faithful will wonder. Have these wicked folk, in fact, been the almighty’s favored all along?

Perhaps. But all the Ivy-educated eggheads and job-stealing border crossers will be nowhere celestial that day. No, they’ll just be skipping out of work — typical, right? — to gather around the television, watch the first game of the World Cup, and plot the socialist revolution between free kicks.

Yes, soccer is a blue-state sport. Elitist and dangerously foreign. If President Barack Obama makes the trip to South Africa, he will surely stop off in his father’s Kenya on the way home to burn the last remaining copies of his birth certificate.

Final proof, this World Cup, of what the Sarah Palin crowd has known all along: Obamicans aren’t real Americans.

Post-Colonial hangover
All is not well in Londontown. The English are staring down debt of Grecian proportions. And after a couple of dour years under recently ousted Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the natives now have to put up with the insufferable David Cameron.

But at least there is football, right?

England, birthplace of the game, is once again quite optimistic about its chances. And it is, once again, quite certain to be disappointed.

Ten years of great sports Moments after Adam Vinatieri's field goal split the uprights as the clock expired in the Louisiana Superdome on February 3, 2002, the streets of Boston were in bedlam. Drunk people dangled from trees and hung off lampposts. Motorists leaned on their horns. I saw a guy hug a cop

Prospect Park Yes! Baseball season is finally here. All is as it should be in the world, if not with the Red Sox, who have had a tough start. But that’s OK.

Jocktail Party This past Sunday night, behind Fenway Park, a subtle yet symbolic changing of the Boston sports-media guard occurred, giving unprecedented power to the people.

Bandwagon fans gear up Only after buying a "Beat L.A." T-shirt, methodically checking ESPN for World Cup updates, and watching every installment of the NBA Finals with a religious fanaticism, has the hard truth settled in: I am a bandwagon fan.

A Tale of Two Towns Charlestown was baptized in bloodshed. Yet this unique, fertile turf has been generally overlooked by Hollywood, which has preferred instead its old rival South Boston, the primary backdrop for Oscar winners Good Will Hunting and The Departed .

Bad sports When historians trace the rise of the blog as the dominant journalistic form of the 21st century, they’ll pay close attention to two recent developments.

Mobile-home game The intersection of Brookline Avenue and Lansdowne Street, in the hours before, during, and after a Red Sox game, is not unlike a trading floor on pre-crash Wall Street: it’s chaotic, teeming with people, and everyone’s trying to make a buck.

The Globe's Plight If history is just one damn thing after another, then we are living in undeniably historic times.

Curse and worse The high point of Johnny Baseball , the new musical receiving its world premiere from the American Repertory Theater (at the Loeb Drama Center through June 27), comes two-thirds of the way through the second act.

Pedal promise Boston has its fair share of deserving bad reputations: the sports fans whined for some 86 years about a “curse” because the Red Sox couldn’t seal the deal; the drivers are terrible; and, thanks in no small part to those driving skills, the city’s streets were thrice voted by Bicycling Magazine as some of the worst in the country for cyclists.